January 14 – Happy Birthday, Derek Richter

Posted
on January 14, 2016

Today's
featured birthday is one of the founders of the science of brain
chemistry.

Actually,
as I was reading about Richter, I decided he was a pioneer in several
ways.

Born
in Bath, England, on this date in 1907, Derek Richter went to
university at Oxford and worked with Nobel-Prize-winner Heinrich
Wieland at Munich University in Germany (this was before Hitler and
World War II).

He later worked alongside other Nobel laureates at the
University of Cambridge.

London was an intense place to liveduring WWII!

At
age 35, a married man with children, with little money and while
living in a city (London) under constant attack by bombs dropped from
airplanes (this of course was during World War II!) – with all of that going on, Richter decided to enter medical school! He continued with his research at the same
time as going to medical school, AND he even set up a research
laboratory for treating shell-shock!

After
the war was over, Richter studied epilepsy; also, he worked with one
of the first Geiger counters in the nation to isolate nuclei from the
cells of the cerebral cortex. He studied brain metabolism, brain
function, therapies, proteins in the brain, and – and – and – !

One
thing I was struck by is how collaborative Richter was, working with
a wide variety of other researchers and doctors on a variety of
studies. He worked with his wife on at least one project. He gathered
together an international group of scientists from many different
fields to create a global approach to research.

Richter
helped start The Journal of Neurochemistry, he helped create brain
research organizations, and he started a charity to research mental
illness. He was in high demand as a lecturer, and he won awards and
fellowships and other sorts of honors.

Richter
also became involved with the World Health Organization and Amnesty
International; he wrote humanitarian books; he became one of the
first sperm donors (at a time when it was really controversial); and
he helped to create a refuge for discharged mental patients.

I
mean – wow! Derek Richter was just a bit of an achiever, wasn't he?
And ahead of his time, as well!

Thanks to Google, you can learn more aboutbrain chemistry than Derek Richter ever knew.

That's because we have learned more about brainsin the past few decades than we have all of previoushuman history. But Richter helped to start that explosion of knowledge!

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